1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of printers, and in particular to systems and methods for managing the printing of documents on recycled media.
2. Description of Related Art
Computer printers, which are ubiquitous in most modern organizations, permit the quick printing of stored documents. Designers of modern printers have focused relentlessly on improving printer speed, efficiency, color accuracy, and cost resulting in virtually universal adoption of printers. Nevertheless, in order to optimize resource usage, most organizations use a network of high speed printers to serve people in the organization. Because these high speed printers may be accessed seamlessly over computer networks, most users served by a high-speed network printer will experience very little or no delay when printing documents. In addition, networking allows the system to be fault tolerant and permits users to switch to other printers when a printer malfunctions or demands service.
With environmental consciousness growing, many organizations have adopted a “green culture” that encourages resource conservation while also promoting efficient resource utilization. Accordingly, many users now recycle paper and other print media that may contain various types of markings, including printed matter. For example, the blank reverse face of a paper sheet with printed matter on its obverse face may be used to print draft copies of documents. In some situations, such as where margins for a document are being adjusted, or minor formatting changes are being made, paper sheets with markings on both sides may also be used. In general, users may recycle media that has undergone prior printing in variety of ways according to the nature of the current print job. The ability to recycle media is typically limited only by the user's ingenuity.
However, the use of recycled paper creates issues in large organizations because print jobs using recycled media (“recycled print jobs”) may be mixed with print jobs using new, unused, or non-recycled media (“non-recycled print jobs”) on a single printer. The problem is compounded because users may inadvertently load recycled media into an input tray being used for new media. In such situations, a user may not realize that a portion of that user's non-recycled print job has been printed on unacceptable recycled material.
Many organizations have also eliminated the use of separator sheets for environmental reasons. Accordingly, it can be difficult to identify and separate jobs from various users without careful and time consuming perusal of documents in an output tray. For example, if two recycled print jobs print consecutively, it may be difficult for the users to determine where one job has ended and a next one has started.
Thus, there is a need for simple and efficient solutions that permit the seamless used of recycled media in modern printing environments.